This week marks the 100th anniversary of Henry Flagler’s railroad to Key West. While it operated far from Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast, its builder is part of the fabric of this region.
The Flagler Museum recently wrapped up its exhibition, “First Train to Paradise: The Railroad That Went to Sea.”
Here’s something we wrote in 1994, on the centennial of the opening of his first Palm Beach hotel, the Royal Poinciana:
Henry Flagler had one last accomplishment in mind: the monumental task of building a 128-mile-long oversea railroad to link the mainland with Key West.
The railroad cost Flagler $20 million, two-fifths of his total Florida investment. Detractors called it “Flagler’s Folly.’’
But in 1912, after seven years of work by 3,000 to 4,000 men, the railroad had come to Key West.
While The Miami Herald would call it the eighth wonder of the world, critics who said it never would pay for itself were proven right. The wonder would last less than a quarter century before it was demolished by the 1935 “Labor Day” storm and replaced by the Overseas Highway.
But on that glorious day in January 1912, a stooped and weak Flagler made a triumphant entrance to a frenzied Key West, where he was overcome by the import of the moment.
A dapper, though weakened, Henry Flagler walks triumphantly off his train when it arrives for the first time in Key West in 1912. (Photo courtesy of the Florida Photographic Collection)
While his friend John Rockefeller was trying to make it to age 100 up in Ormond Beach — he failed by three years in 1937 — Flagler also was falling victim to age. He could barely see or hear. He had become introspective and lonely and would be seen sitting silently.
A year later, in January 1913, while entering a bathroom around the side from Whitehall’s lobby stairway, he fell down three steps to the landing below, breaking his hip. He later would slip into a coma. His son Harry, estranged from his father since 1894, rushed to his side, but it was too late: Flagler did not recognize him.
Flagler died May 20, 1913, at 83 in a cottage next to The Breakers.
Artists from the Art Guild of the Purple Isles and Island Christian School put the finishing touches on a 60-foot-wide outdoor mural last month in Key Largo. The mural, at mile marker 95, depicts Henry Flagler’s Florida Keys Over-Sea Railroad. The artwork was created for the Jan. 22 centennial anniversary of the completion of the ‘railroad that went to sea.’ Though The Miami Herald called it the eighth wonder of the world, it remained in operation only until September 1935, less than a quarter of a century. (AP/Andy Newman/Florida Keys News Bureau)
Tags: Henry Flagler, railroads
On Nov. 30, 1955, the city of West Palm Beach sold a water bond issue to purchase the West Palm Beach Water Co. and its 17,000 acres of land for $8.5 million from the Henry Flagler estate. Flagler built the water plant at Clear Lake in 1894 when just a few hundred people lived in the area. By 1955 the water company served 15,700 households and businesses in West Palm Beach and Palm Beach, and it currently provides water to 51,000 customers. Read more about the current state of the water facility here.
1919 “Map of the Property of the West Palm Beach Water Co.”
Tags: Henry Flagler, This Week in History, West Palm Beach
The Flagler Memorial Bridge, the northernmost of the three bridges between West Palm Beach and Palm Beach, opened on July 1, 1938. The first bridge at the site opened in 1901, replacing the earlier railroad spur that was four blocks to the south. Henry Flagler’s wife, Mary Lily, wanted the train and its noise farther away from their Whitehall home. The 1938 bridge still stands, the oldest movable bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway from North Miami to Cape Canaveral. It is scheduled to be replaced later this year.
The Nov. 20, 1938 “mail-away issue” of The Palm Beach Post (a season preview for winter visitors) featured an aerial view of the new Flagler Memorial Bridge with this caption:
Exceptional view of West Palm Beach’s imposing skyline — An unusual picture of the city looking across the roof of the Palm Beach Biltmore Hotel in Palm Beach, with the downtown district in panoramic display to the left of the new Flagler Memorial Bridge, dedicated early in the summer by Senators Pepper and Andrews. The bridge links the two resort cities. Beyond the town in the distance may be seen Clear Lake, source of fresh water for the Palm Beaches, while stretching in the distance beyond the lake lies a section of the back-country. The broad, sweeping curves of the lake’s edge shelters Flagler Drive, a tree-lined thoroughfare skirting the lake’s edge for blocks in either direction. Jutting out from the shore-line on the far side of Lake Worth may be seen the city’s dock system, a stopping place for palatial yachts and charter boats during the season about to open.”
Tags: bridge, Henry Flagler, Palm Beach, This Week in History
On May 20, 1913, Henry Morrison Flagler died after taking a fall on the marble steps of his winter home in Palm Beach. His obituary in the Miami Daily Metropolis called him “one of the greatest of the modern captains of industry, director in Standard Oil, builder of the Florida East Coast Railroad, investor of over fifty million dollars in Florida alone, and the man who first noticed the great possibilities for the settlement and development of the east coast of Florida.”
Tags: death, Henry Flagler, This Week in History
By Michelle Quigley
On March 22, 1894, Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway came south to West Palm Beach. The railroad lured businesses to the new downtown and established Palm Beach as a winter resort.
In the 1890s and early 1900s, Flagler Memorial Bridge was a one-lane wooden railroad trestle with a footpath that provided access to Palm Beach via the Florida East Coast Railway. Guests with private railroad cars used the bridge to get to Palm Beach hotels. The bridge soon became a toll bridge, with pedestrians paying a nickel and horseback riders a dime to cross. Tolls cased in 1928, and in 1938, the wood bridge was replaced by a four-lane concrete and steel structure. Read more about the Flagler Memorial Bridge. (Photo courtesy of Historical Society of Palm Beach County)
Tags: Henry Flagler, railroads, This Week in History
